THOUGH JUST A DAY PAST ITS SELL-BY, IT DOES SMELL A BIT IFFY.

PIZZA EXPRESS

I only found myself here by a series of eating misfortunes that left Walthamstow’s incarnation of the dough and cheese-based consumable chain as the final stop following two aborted attempts to eat food in other establishments. Things had sunk pretty low.

When eating was done, however, I severely scolded myself for overlooking up to this point a review of this, the most mightily mediocre of all eateries. Pizza Express is the Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans, lo! The fucking Ben Hur of mediocrity.

There is absolutely no distinct taste to a Pizza Express pizza, and no way to differentiate between each of its heinously overpriced models. It’s incredibly oily, and they offer you chilli and garlic oil to put on top the oil. I accepted. There was no discernable flavour in either, just oil. This is tasty food for only people whose regular diet is discarded cardboard packaging from a skip behind Argos.

At least if someone used your gaping, open mouth as a toilet, it would be an experience of sorts. This is nothing in that vein. No, Sir/Madam.

I might as well take on the ambience of the establishment while I’m here, for what it’s worth. The lighting is too light, the seating is too wipe-down and they’ve got faux-localised ‘art’ prints pinned to the wall of cultural landmarks that have since been bulldozered and sequestered to the usual brand of bland property criminals that have London in the back pocket of their fucking shit suit. They look heavily Photoshopped.

Again, it’s not a scene affecting enough to be truly shit – it’s simply an aching chasm of nothingness hungrily gobbling up human existence to a degree that would make the Great Cthulhu proud.

Honestly, you might as well eat Kraft cheese slices on stale bits of Kingsmill while sitting in the reception of a mid-level accountancy firm and calling yourself a pop-up pizzeria before even considering voluntarily bringing this into your life. We will all be dead soon. There is not the time for this.